At Last
by Spectographer
Summary: So far the evening has gone smoother than Harvey dared hope. It makes him anxious. (originally posted for Darvey secret santa)


**A/N: Originally written for Darvey Secret Santa exchange on Twitter. Prompt by Jess (darveymylove) - Donna and Harvey are together, she goes into labor on Christmas Eve night.**

So far the Christmas Eve party has gone smoother than Harvey dared hope. It makes him anxious. He sneaks a look at the clock – just after seven. He can't believe it, it feels like midnight.

"Do you think it's strange?" Louis wants to know. Harvey wasn't listening, but coming from Louis he's willing to bet there was a certain strangeness in what was said.

Harvey shrugs. "Maybe a little."

"Technically the cream is made of peacock droppings, but it makes your skin feel _phenomenal_. I'm sure Donna will love it."

The mention of his wife has Harvey glancing across the room. She stands by the window, kneading the small of her back. Well into her eighth month of pregnancy and Donna still finds a way to look highly polished and objectively beautiful, venturing heels and a short dress of deep red that hangs loosely over their little bump. Her profile is pert and firm as she strains to look out at the dark streets of Manhattan. Outside it has begun to snow, a light fluttering that blurs the lighted windows of the office building across from the Litt family's penthouse.

Harvey quickly excuses himself, leaving the burden of conversation about the wonders of fecal face cream on some other innocent party-goer.

Donna smiles when she sees him coming for her. They lightly kiss. Her lips are warm and faintly sticky with freshly applied lipstick. She stays a while in his embrace, her body relaxing against his in an unspeakable confession: she's tired and uncomfortable and wants to go home.

Harvey decides to take the hit for her. "When do you think it's appropriate to ditch this place?"

"I'm not sure," she says, drawing away from him. "Usually the kids would've burned the building down by now. I've forgotten the etiquette of leaving a party in a dignified way."

"Don't jinx it."

Donna puts a finger to her lips, to signal she knows better than to push their luck.

"How's the little one?" Harvey asks, resting a splayed hand on top of her belly. "Still giving you a hard time?"

She smiles softly and lays a cool hand over his. "Just kicking my spleen and elbowing my kidneys. Nothing I can't handle."

"These punks have turned you tough."

Donna laughs and Harvey feels a sudden flood of tenderness toward her. He can't imagine the kind of ache and discomfort she's enduring. Moved by his affection he reaches over, plucks a branch from the Ficus beside him and holds it above their heads.

Donna quirks an eyebrow. "Is that meant to be mistletoe?"

"Have some imagination, darling."

Grinning, Donna wraps her arms around Harvey's neck. "Mr. Specter, when did you become such a – " Her words are lost in the squall as somewhere upstairs a child shrieks, followed by something heavy crashing to the ground.

Donna and Harvey look up, mutely watching the chandelier above them sway.

"Jesus," Harvey whispers. "Took them long enough."

"You go ahead," Donna says, affording him a chaste kiss on the chin. "I'll get the coats."

…

Amanda Specter sits on the floor of the Litt family's home office, hands tied behind her back with a set of Christmas lights stolen from a bush in the foyer, and exhales slowly through her mouth.

"Can't I be tied up on the couch? It's cold down here."

"Can it, dorkus," her twin brother, Gordon, snaps. His feet are kicked up on the large executive desk and even with all the law books stacked at the seat of his chair his blond head barely clears the oak table. "How many zeros are there in ten billion?"

Amanda shrugs. "Do I look like an accountant?"

Gordon ignores this and takes a slow sip of grape cider, his brown eyes inspecting Amanda over the brim of the Scotch tumbler. The look is so appropriately villainous it sends goose bumps up Amanda's spine. She doesn't know why they ever let Charlie Litt play the bad guy when Gordon's performance is so much more tyrannous.

"You're never going to get away with this," Amanda says. She tries for a posh British accent, something regal, but thinks she sounds too exuberant. Dropping the accent she adds, confident but with a subtle, high note of distress, "Charlie will save me."

Gordon lets himself look a touch irritated. He has their mother's easy way of expressing exactly the right amount of emotion. Amanda has always envied this. Even though she has her mother's looks – red hair, freckled face, and fair complexion – she has her father's temperament. She laughs as easily as she angers.

Gordon says, "With all due respect, Miss, you're boring the heck out of me."

Amanda has seen Heartbreak Ridge with her daddy enough times to know he's quoting Clint Eastwood, but it fits the scene so well she lets him have it.

"Perhaps I wouldn't be so boring if I wasn't tied to a coffee table." Amanda makes a show of trying to wrestle out of the Christmas lights. She actually manages to get a hand free but, in respect for the performance, slips it back into its restraint.

Gordon hops down from his seat and takes an unnervingly slow stroll around the office. He stops in front of Amanda and squats down, elbows resting on his thighs. "Where's Charlie hiding?"

Amanda's eyes conspicuously flick over to the lady of justice statue at the corner of the room. Charlie flashes a nervous smile at her from behind the lady's marble skirt. "I'll never tell you," Amanda says, eyeballs sliding back to Gordon.

"Tell me," Gordon says, "or I'll pour cider all over you."

Amanda narrows her eyes. "You wouldn't dare."

Gordon straightens and with his glass raised walks teasingly forward.

"Pause!" Amanda shouts, panicking. "This dress is satin, Gordon. You'll ruin it."

"I'd be doing you a favor. It's too much fluff."

"It's called _tulle_ and you can never have too much of it."

Gordon rolls his eyes and Amanda feels her face heat up, her blood practically boiling at his blatant disregard for the sophistications of high fashion.

"Guess what, Mandy," Gordon says, his voice a teasing sing-song, "Tacky called and they want their fluffy ugly dress back."

Amanda makes a sound low in her throat – a very unladylike growl she's glad her mother's not near enough to hear. "Well tacky called me. Also. First. And says they want your face back."

Gordon flashes the trademark Specter smile. "Takes tacky to know tacky."

Drawn out by Amanda's humiliation, Charlie shouts in protest, "She's not tacky!" In his checkered bowtie and overly large spectacles he isn't exactly the textbook knight in shining armor. Regardless, Amanda feels a light flutter in her belly as he charges forward. Charlie makes a show of shoving Gordon, but it's really more of a nudge. Still, the shock of it is enough to jolt Gordon's arm, sending grape cider arcing through the air. The purple liquid splatters all over Amanda's face and dress.

The boys freeze and watch Amanda carefully, waiting for the monsoon.

Amanda takes a moment to be appalled. She thinks about crying, but feels like she's at an age – seven in two months and twelve days (not that she's counting) – where a delicate and ladylike anger is probably the more appropriate reaction. But by the time she settles on a reasonable emotion – and yes, even the beginnings of a monologue about the immaturity of young boys – Gordon and Charlie have lost interest and are chasing each other around the office.

Rage coils inside Amanda's chest. Without thinking she slides her foot into Gordon's path. He trips and goes stumbling across the room, knocking into lady justice hard enough to send her teetering. Charlie lets out a rather ungentlemanly scream and Amanda watches with bated breath as the marble statue crashes to the floor.

All three children stare in fixated horror as the lady's marble head with its golden blindfold rolls loudly along the parquet.

Gordon looks at Amanda. She is three minutes his senior and therefore must take on the duty of weighing these catastrophic events and coming up with a plan of action. She draws blank.

From the staircase below her father's deep voice shouts out to them.

Charlie bolts for the door and Gordon takes off after him.

"Dad!" Gordon exclaims. "Amanda and Charlie broke Louis' lady statue."

"I did not!" Amanda shrieks.

Her father makes it to the threshold of the study, letting Charlie squeeze by but blocking Gordon from his retreat. Her dad groans as he takes in the scene, and Amanda, using this as her cue, begins her trembling lower lip routine. "Please, Daddy," she says. "I didn't do it."

"She did," Gordon says. "I swear."

Her father sighs. "And how exactly did your sister do all of this when she's tied to a table?"

Gordon is stunned by the question. Her father doesn't wait for the answer, but bends down and untangles Amanda's hands from the Christmas lights. She starts to cry and her father's gentle and soothing words only make her cry harder. She only begins to calm when she is lifted into his arms, loved and forgiven. The better child.

"You're in a lot of trouble, pal," her father tells Gordon. Amanda peaks over her dad's broad shoulder, eager to see her brother's defeated face. Gordon glares up at her. _Some nerve_. Sore and perhaps a little heartbroken by his betrayal, Amanda feels the need to rub it in and juts her tongue out at him.

"Amanda." Her mother. Stern and cold and full of discipline. "That wasn't kind, what you just did."

"But Mommy…" Amanda begins to explain, but is so full of shame she starts crying again.

Her father sets her back on the floor. Cast out of his loving arms she feels small and vulnerable.

"I can't believe it," her mother begins, pacing the study. "We leave you alone for what, twenty minutes? And somehow the two of you have managed to completely behead a statue. How is that even possible?"

Normally her mother's anger would radiate from her, envelop them in a dazzling heated aura, but tonight her words don't quite pack the punch. 'Exhaustion' is what her father calls it, this paleness that has taken over. Even the freckles covering her arms seem pale. But Amanda has seen the movie The Boss Baby enough times to know what's happening here. She thinks of her mother's great belly like a deep, unknowable ocean and this baby is a sea monster lurking beneath, stealing her glow and affection and smiles. She is afraid, when lying in her mother's arms, to feel its obtrusive little limbs pressing against the margins of her mother's soft skin, already trying to kick Amanda out and make room for itself.

"Well?" her mother prompts.

Gordon says, "I plead the fifth."

"Me too," Amanda chimes in. "I plead the fifth too."

She nods, looking briefly moved by her children's passion and intellect. "Glad you little monsters know your rights. Now put on your coats. We're leaving."

"What!" Gordon looks alarmed, his eyes shifting from one parent to the other. "This isn't justice!"

"Oh, _now_ you want justice?" Their father mimes his surprised, already coaxing them out the French doors. "Should've thought about that before you knocked her head off, sport."

…

The fireplace crackles. Harvey sits alone in the living room nursing a glass of scotch and watching the Patriots versus Redskins game on the sports channel. It's late into the fourth quarter. The Patriots have the offensive, but White fumbles. Peterson picks it up and it's a straight shot to the end zone. Touchdown. It puts the Skins ahead nineteen to fourteen. Harvey curses and waits for Donna to launch into one of her impassioned rants about White and his greasy woman hands, then remembers she's upstairs putting the kids to bed. An hour early, no bedtime story. He kissed those blond and copper heads and tried not to look into their sad eyes. Donna's eyes. Both of them. He cracks like an egg before those soft, watery gazes.

Harvey shuts the TV off. Listens. Marriage has made him strangely dependent. He's not one but two, and when Donna isn't in the room, when he can't hear her knocking around in the kitchen or upstairs, he gets uneasy, like the old ticker in his chest loses rhythm without her close by.

He goes looking for her and finds her upstairs in the kids' bedroom. She sits on Amanda's bed brushing the little redhead's hair and softly singing Etta James.

 _At last my love has come along/ My lonely days are over and life is like a song_

Gordon, bored and banned from his toys, is doing an exaggerated ballet at the center of the room, naked but for his Batman briefs. He sees Harvey standing in the doorway and the elegant dance turns lethal; a grand jeté comes at him as a flying karate kick. Harvey catches the kid's foot and yanks him upward, lets him hang.

"Dad!" Gordon shrieks, laughing.

From across the room both redheads give the scene matching stares of disapproval. Donna says, "Don't rile him, Harvey. It's bedtime."

"Etta isn't going to work on this punk, Baby, we gotta gut him."

"Gut me!" Gordon's face reddens as he curls his body upward to face Harvey with his shock.

"Gut you and then stuff you. Louis needs a new justice statue and you have a pretty head."

Gordon wiggles, twisting like a fish on a hook to face his mother. " _Mom_ ," he pleads.

Illumination rises in Donna's eyes. Playing along, she tells their son, "You did make Louis cry."

"Louis cries if I make _fart_ noises at the dinner table."

"It's true," Amanda says, sounding almost maternal. "Once Gordon was blowing farts on his hand and Louis started crying. He said it was –" Amanda pauses, building up the drama. Donna nods for her to go on. " _Uncouth_."

Gordon stops struggling. Breathless and worn, he sways through the air. "What's that mean, Dad?"

"It means you're an animal."

Harvey gently drops Gordon to the floor. The kid lays back, head propped on an elbow and legs crossed. He brushes his blond hair back with one hand, like some kind of swimsuit model. Harvey sees Donna in him. He sees himself. It's a terrifying mix of charm and ego.

"Did you really make Louis cry?" he asks.

"Like a baby," Gordon says. "Shelia got all soppy too."

"What a champ."

Harvey moves to Gordon's side of the room and pulls back the quilt on his twin-sized bed. The kid sluggishly picks himself up from the floor, shuffles over and collapses beneath the sheets. He can hear Donna behind him, tucking Amanda in. Her voice is low, almost caressing.

 _I found a dream that I could speak to / A dream that I could call my own_

"I'm sorry I knocked over the statue," Gordon says, nuzzling into his pillow. "It was _uncouth_ of me."

Harvey smiles and runs a hand through his son's hair. He admires the softness of it, the pale strands the sun deepens to a shiny gold. "I forgive you," he tells the kid. "Just make sure you learn from your mistakes."

"I did learn. Never trust a Litt."

Harvey's reached this same conclusion many times during his life, but time and age – or more likely his wife - has worn him into a more mature perspective. "You can trust a Litt," he says, pulling the covers up over Gordon's shoulders. "But only about as far as you can throw them."

"I could probably throw Charlie pretty far."

"Then you can trust him more than you think."

He bends over and presses a kiss to Gordon's forehead. Already he feels the boy flinch and go rigid, like the gesture is too babyish. Pretty soon it will be all handshakes and fist bumps, and that makes Harvey a little sad. "Sleep well, pal. I love you."

"Love you too, Dad."

With still another child to give his affection to Harvey crosses the room, passing Donna along the way. She touches his shoulder – a coy smile and a soft pat and he's brought back to the years where a casual touch was all they had. He feels a swift love, for her, his life, the world.

…

In their bedroom Donna stands in front of the bureau in a short white nightdress, prepping herself for bed. "This cream Louis got me has a strange consistency," she says.

"That's because it's bird shit," Harvey tells her. He sits in the lounge chair across the room, watching her as he tugs the tie from his collar. The dying fire at his back casts him in a provocative glow. He keeps his legs spread wide, tries to look inviting. Maybe she'll buy it.

"Is it really?" Donna sniffs the pot of lotion, intrigued. "What kind of bird?"

"Does it matter?"

She ponders this. "No," she says. "For age defying, pore-less skin I'd let any bird shit on my face, I think."

Harvey rolls his eyes, but he can't help smiling back at her. As much as she likes to irritate him there isn't a single red hair, not one freckle, he doesn't love.

"Come here." His voice is husky, coaxing.

She moves from the bureau and pads over to him. The fire light with its crimson embers give the gaze she levels on him something extra sexy. He sits back and admires her. His eyes glide covetously up from her plum painted toes to the shadow her nipples cast through the thin cotton of her nightie. Despite the curve her belly cuts into her figure, she has kept her firm neatness. "When can I unwrap you?" he asks, gripping himself, teasing the glimmer of arousal building below his waist.

"Once we sort out how we're going to handle this statue situation." She turns her voice tight to match the maternal burden.

Harvey sits up and because her body is there reaches under her nightdress and cups her ass. He says, looking up past the swell of her breast to her face, "We've put them to sleep early on Christmas Eve, baby. That's harsh punishment when you're six. I'd call that handled."

Her dark eyes look down on his with somber concentration. He nuzzles his face into her chest and closes his eyes, hiding from her intent downward gaze. He feels his hardness is just another child to her, something to tuck in and put to sleep. "I don't think we're being strict enough," she says.

"They both seemed pretty sorry to me."

"If they're so sorry why do they keep misbehaving?"

He flicks her nipple with his tongue through the cotton fabric. "Because they're brats," he murmurs.

She must know she's lost him to the swell in his pants because she sighs and rests her fingers behind his ears, pulling him softly by the short hairs to face her. "You think they're asleep yet?"

"Of course," he lies. "Like little angels."

Donna shakes her head and smiles. Harvey catches a mischievous glint in her eyes and then she is kneeling before him. Her fingertips, with nails painted the same plum color as her toes, trail lightly over his hard-on. That glimmer contained in his trousers grows sweetly stiffer. "You want your present, I suppose?"

"Haven't I been good?"

"Good enough." She unzips his fly and he feels the cool touch of her fingers. His heart races in anticipation of being taken by those pretty lips, heaven's gates. He shuts his eyes, relaxes back and waits a beat. Two beats. Three. Growing impatient, Harvey lifts his lids and finds Donna staring at his crotch, looking stiff and uncomfortable.

"Contraction?" he asks.

She bites her bottom lip and nods. They share a look – a couple of weary parents, missing the days when they could make love for hours without interruption. Now they have to fit it in quick unromantic sessions scheduled around a couple of six year olds, and half the time he has Barbie's foot up his ass because Amanda likes to bring her toys to bed. And here is the littlest one, still in the womb and already learning to insert itself at the most inopportune time. If he wasn't so irritated he might be impressed.

"C'mon," he says softly, "let's get your feet up."

He tucks himself back, half-hard, into his boxers and rezips his fly. Then he helps her to her feet and into bed. She curls up on her side, wincing and breathing deep. Harvey kicks his shoes off and stretches out behind her, taking up the husbandly duty of rubbing her belly. The contractions make her stomach hard, more spherical, like a basketball a few pounds over regulation pressure. He wonders if the baby senses his paternal hand and will be calmed by it.

When he feels her soften, he asks, "How many contractions have you had today?"

"Probably twenty."

"No more than four an hour?"

"I don't know," she says, a little irritated.

"The doctor said –"

"I know what the doctor said, Harvey."

He drops it – the instinct involved in labor is something he'll never understand – and lets his focus wander elsewhere. His hand slides down and touches the soft skin of her thigh. He admires the length of her legs, the bones of her knees, how they still look a little tan from their trip to the Caribbean a few months back.

"Sorry," she says, "they're prickly."

"God, yeah," he teases. "Like a yeti."

"Really lowering the standards on this dirty talk, aren't we?"

He kisses her freckled shoulder. "A smokin' hot yeti."

She laughs and something tight in Harvey's chest relaxes. He moves his hand up, fingers teasing her inner thigh. Her laugh turns into a soft exhale that reignites him below the waist. She must feel the heat too because she spreads her legs, takes his hand and slips it into her panties.

There are a lot of details husband and wife work out over the years. With the constant interruption to their intimacy, Donna has taken up coaching. Harvey is grateful for this. He could spend hours fiddling around down there, but now he is just an orchestra – hands, mouth and prick – and she is the conductor setting the tempo. _Allegro._

"A little left. No. No – your _other_ left, Harvey. How did you ever pass the bar?"

"That _is_ left, honeybunch."

Donna's body goes stiff. "I hate it when you call me that. It makes me feel like a cereal."

He smiles to himself and fights off a chuckle. Fearing she's getting agitated, he moves his fingers over a smidge and strokes a slow circle.

" _Oh_." She shuts her eyes. "That's it."

"See. That's your right." – Sometimes he just can't help himself – "And I fucking nailed the bar."

"I wish you'd shut up and nail me."

"Three-seventy-five," he brags, pressing himself against her ass, getting off on his own ego. She moans. "One of the essays was on the Commerce Clause of Article I."

Her moan turns into a sob. He's not even at the good part.

"The issue was whether Section 11 of the FDA Prevention Act is constitutional –"

"Oh god. _Harvey_."

"I know," he coos.

"No, damn it." She jerks up. "I'm having a contraction."

He stares at her back. "Again? How bad?"

Rather than respond she slides off the bed and heads to the bathroom. Harvey gives her a few minutes of space before going after her.

When he finds her, she is sitting on the edge of the tub looking alarmingly pale. She's in labor. Harvey didn't expect this, nor did he expect to feel so frightened by it.

"I'm not ready," she says, a little breathless.

Harvey sits down beside her and takes her hand into his. "You said that last time, remember?"

"And we weren't. We've been through four nannies in the past year. _Four_ , Harvey, that's one every three months."

Unsure of why she's choosing now to have this conversation, he gropes. "Yeah, but what other six year olds can speak both Spanish and Vietnamese? The turn-over keeps them well-rounded."

"I worked so hard to get them into that theater group on 29th too and Gordon's already been kicked out for chopping that poor girl's hair off."

"She broke his heart," Harvey argues weakly. "He's sensitive. Like his old man. Think of all the times I pulled your pigtails because you weren't giving me the right kind of attention."

Donna watches him with the stillness of disdain. She's not smiling, though the opportunity has been given. She says, "It was bad what he did. _Really_ bad."

"Well –" He gropes harder. "Amanda's good. She's the president of her class and helps with the dishes."

"She sent Santa a subpoena instead of a Christmas list."

"Her case is very compelling."

"Harvey." Donna sighs; her patience is being tried.

"Look, maybe this baby will be the good one. The mediator."

She doesn't buy it. Everyone knows the baby in the family is the worst of the bunch. Harvey delicately changes course.

"Do you remember that time Amanda was sick? We had to quarantine her, and Gordon wouldn't stop crying. They were both fussing all night, one and then the other, and eventually the two of us were sitting there on the floor, crying with them."

Donna nods; the mention of the shed tears, hers and his, give her eyes a glassy sheen.

"We were worried we didn't know what we were doing. And we probably didn't, we probably still don't. But we do our best and I think our best is pretty decent most days. I mean, the twins are almost seven and they haven't been to prison yet, so –" He shrugs. "They can't be that bad."

Donna half laughs, half sobs. He feels her soften and grow acceptant, and in turn, Harvey feels less afraid.

"I'm here with you," he says, squeezing her hand. "We're in this together. And our brats upstairs, they're here for you too. We cry together, we succeed together. Okay?"

"Okay," she whispers, blinking a few tears loose.

"So, we having this baby?"

She smiles wanly, already looking exhausted. "Yes."

"Good. Because I don't think we have much of a choice.

…

The four Specters welcome their fifth in the early hours of Christmas morning. Outside, the snow has stalled. New York with its fresh sheet of white powder seems almost foreign. The streets look tranquil. Clean.

Donna lies in the hospital bed with Gordon on one side and Amanda curled up on the other. Her boy is asleep, wearing an over-washed blue hospital gown that matches hers. Somehow in the panic of leaving the house Gordon put his jacket on and forgot the rest of his clothes. Amanda is just the opposite, wide awake and dressed in a red evening gown. Donna runs her fingers through her daughter's hair, fine and soft, more orange than red. "I'm proud of you," she tells her.

Amanda beams at the compliment. "Gordon was scared because you were hurting, but not me. I know how strong you are."

"Only because you held my hand and talked me through it."

Amanda's smile begins to fade, a heavy thought weighing it down. "Babies take a lot of attention, don't they?"

"They do," Donna says, sensing her anxieties. "I was hoping you could help me, now that you're a big sister."

Amanda gives an eager nod. "I'll be the best big sister. I promise."

"I'll need you close," she says, pulling the child further into her embrace. "We're out-numbered now. Us girls have to stick together."

"I thought I wasn't going to like him," Amanda admits, "but I love him a lot. He looks like daddy."

"He does, doesn't he?"

Donna glances over at Harvey. He's standing by the window, holding their new son, already eager to show him the world; white with the new snow, he is born with a blank canvas.

Harvey must feel the weight of Donna's gaze because he turns to meet her eyes.

She wants to say I love you, but it doesn't feel like enough. It never has. So she simply smiles at him and he smiles back, like they have so many times from across the office, through the threshold of an elevator, while drinking together in the dark, because there are no words for this love, for their companionship, only these moments.

Donna shuts her eyes, pulls her children closer and softly sings.

 _And here we are in heaven/ for you are mine at last_


End file.
